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One of the things I have done with mine is focus on str/wisdom, to maximize cruel recovery and the interesting ranger riders. The Master's Blade allows two stances, so Master of the Hunt and Follow-Up Blow can both be activated. Using a crown of victory allows 2 APs per encounter, so a planned Act Together plus regular AP is possible. This grants another 2 standard and move actions. Couple this with a timeless locket which can convert a minor into a standard action. Add in the boots of eagerness which provide another move action once per encounter, and that's one big nova potential - I believe that adds up to 4 standard actions, 3 move, and one minor in a round.

The challenge is actually finding (or recharging) enough minor action attacks to make use of all that move.

The real challenge with nova builds is finding those two magic item dailies that give the most damage yield. Master's Blade and Timeless Locket are both great powers but need to be weighed against things like Torc of Power Preservation and Belt of Titan's Strength. If there was a way to enable two stances outside of daily item powers that would be a huge boost for all Ranger builds.

As for using minor action attacks, the nova I have posted recycles Nonchalant Collapse effectively with Martial Mastery and Action Point abuse.

This also has the possibility of boosting the pathfinder's nova, because activating dervish's challenge is a minor action attack, at 3[w]+str damage.

I'm already grabbing Jackal Strike from Fighter (Free Action 3[W] that triggers when you bloody the target). Dervish's Challenge is still a great power though.

I'm torn on the new lvl 9 daily, Marked for Death. It grants another two dice of hunter's quarry, which directly translates into a lot more temp hp for the pathfinder. It also marks for a round, which helps the pathfinder is his pseudo-defender role. However, you only get the extra dice against one enemy, so it depends on if your dm throws bosses at the party with any regularity. It also has stiff competition at the level, including the regular suspects like Attacks on the Run or new additions like grabbing Dervish's Challenge from the fighter.

Marked for Death certaily plays to the Pathfinder's abilities but it is still just a level 9 power. You are giong to be much better off going for higher level powers in the long run, such as Ranger's Resurgence.

Slashing Storm, ranger or fighter epic tier feat in MP2, gives pathfinder (and many other classes) a taste of the stormwarden autodamage - and is in some cases superior, due to it working on any enemy that starts its turn adjacent to the ranger. Since it's on the enemy's turn though, it's rather hard to calculate it into a nova sequence or dpr, unless you make the (reasonable) assumption that if you end your turn next to an enemy, they'll start their turn next to you.

In actual play, this is a must have feat.

EDIT: One thing I noticed regarding Jackal Strike, is you have it listed as triggered by target 1 becoming bloodied, but you have not marked him, and therefore cannot trigger Jackal Strike.

San Francisco Bay Area D&Der.
Loyal fan of the Birthright campaign setting.

EDIT: One thing I noticed regarding Jackal Strike, is you have it listed as triggered by target 1 becoming bloodied, but you have not marked him, and therefore cannot trigger Jackal Strike.

At the start of the nova sequence, Student of the Sword is activated which allows you to mark the target until the end of your next turn.

Ah, now I see it. Thanks!

Have you tried crunching the numbers on the damage you're putting out? I built a quickie shifter str/wis pathfinder and have been able to get his nova up to 2,268 so far, including Act Together and activating the violet solitaire (92% chance of at least one critical during the nova round).

I might as well post it here. It's all damage against one target, since I found hoping for more enemies around to be a bit unreliable. Although with that kind of damage it's overkill against even a god, I didn't bother calculating in miss chance so that should bring the numbers down some.

All credit goes both to both Shadow_Darkwood, whom I snatched the idea of a barbarian multiclass from, and LordDuskBlade; I basically copied LDB's pit fighter build and nova layout for this, planting in a pathfinder instead.

If you can get at least one teammate to play along with your nova, one of your teammates can use an action point before you and allow you to activate Act Together as an immediate reaction to grant you a second action point, usable via a crown of victory.

You have used all of your non-paragon dailies and encounters at this point. You have a choice here. Either use Slasher’s Mark against two enemies for some nice damage against each, or Twin Strike if only one enemy remains within reasonable reach. I am going to assume one target and use a Twin Strike.

This build does not use frostcheese, backgrounds, or hybriding. In fact, it could drop barbarian completely and remain a pure ranger; simply stick with Death Rend at lvl 27 instead of Hurricane of Blades and only lose two attacks in the nova and 58 nova damage from losing the barbarian stance.

I haven't crunched the numbers yet on working in Commanding Confrontation for the 2+wisdom modifier damage buff.

San Francisco Bay Area D&Der.
Loyal fan of the Birthright campaign setting.

The obvious power choice would be level 29's Kiss of Death. Of course it has to have errata. There's possibly a few other options as well, such as Press the Advantage and maybe Nasty Backswing.

Yeah..... Kiss of Death is better than Follow Up Blow in every way for a nova round against a single target. That's just nuts. Thankfully both stances are level 29 so you can't stack them with Master's Blade.

The real challenge with nova builds is finding those two magic item dailies that give the most damage yield. Master's Blade and Timeless Locket are both great powers but need to be weighed against things like Torc of Power Preservation and Belt of Titan's Strength. If there was a way to enable two stances outside of daily item powers that would be a huge boost for all Ranger builds.

I see what you mean about the Torc vs. Timeless locket. When I was building my nova, I wound up using a twin strike for the final standard action, which seems like such a waste. Another use of hurricane of blades, as your build has, does seem preferable. However, I'm still just a bit leery of having to roll a 4+ to recharge the power, as none of the other encounter powers are worth recharging (or are already accounted for with Martial Mastery). The timeless locket's power is guaranteed, and has a nice property of adding its enhancement to initiative.

Maybe if there was a way to work in a Dice of Auspicious Fortune (d 381) to this build. That could guarantee the torc in case of a bad roll, would help make sure lashing leaves and blade cascade work the whole way, and might also guarantee the crit needed for the solitaire.

San Francisco Bay Area D&Der.
Loyal fan of the Birthright campaign setting.

Have you tried crunching the numbers on the damage you're putting out?

The short answer is no. I'm too lazy.

The long answer:

I've thought about it but I don't really care about the numbers really. If I was dead set on reaching a goal like dropping Orcus in one round by myself I would do it. In the end this build and the others like it do one thing: deal stupid amounts of damage. We've seen that trick before. It's probably why this thread didn't generate the excitment that the Pitfighter and Stormwarden threads did. LDB has already crunched the numbers on his builds and shown what they can do. The Pathfinder I've presented does the same thing but in a slightly different way. That being action point abuse.

The pre nerf CON focus build I devised just took what LDB ironed out (abuse of Follow Up Blow in conjunction with large static damage modifiers and the recursion of non-standard action attacks)and elevated it to the next level (increasing the number of attacks by over 100%).

In the end I didn't pull down the excitment that LDB did probably because it was just the same old thing only bigger. Regardless, we all knew that it would get nerfed eventually. Indeed, it almost seems like they read this thread and made changes to nerf this specific build. Storm of Baldes lost it's CON mod cap and was made weaker than it's lv 27 brother, Hurricane of Blades had two attacks shaved off and Follow Up Blow no longer generated attacks in conjunction with melee basic attacks (Ring of Draconic Zeal, Two Weapon Opening, ect). These were all things that I was using to generate huge numbers of attacks.

If they really want to stop these kinds of builds from poping up they need to break the legs of Follow Up Blow once and for all instead of just trimming the edges and reprinting new versions (Kiss of Death) because its the real reason these builds are able to do what they can do. Also, power recursion needs to be looked at seriously. As a general rule you should only be able to recycle one power per round at the very least. That would break up these huge nova rounds.

You are using three action points in an encounter. Crown of Victory allows only two. How does that work? IMO the rules are very clear. Heroes can only spend one action point in an encounter. Act Together does not override that rule, otherwise it would state "even if you have already spent and action point in this encounter." The only exception to the general rule is Crown of Victory, so that makes a max of two action points.

You are using three action points in an encounter. Crown of Victory allows only two. How does that work? IMO the rules are very clear. Heroes can only spend one action point in an encounter. Act Together does not override that rule, otherwise it would state "even if you have already spent and action point in this encounter." The only exception to the general rule is Crown of Victory, so that makes a max of two action points.

Also... free actions have been nerfed to allowing only one attack per turn using free actions. So this build is completely null and void now.

Holy thread necromancy, dude. The OP hasn't bothered with this thread in a year - why did you bring it up?

"The best defense is a good offense." -Gen. George S. Patton
Also known as: LDB.
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You are using three action points in an encounter. Crown of Victory allows only two. How does that work? IMO the rules are very clear. Heroes can only spend one action point in an encounter. Act Together does not override that rule, otherwise it would state "even if you have already spent and action point in this encounter." The only exception to the general rule is Crown of Victory, so that makes a max of two action points.

Also... free actions have been nerfed to allowing only one attack per turn using free actions. So this build is completely null and void now.